Why the first thing we do in a career transition is usually the wrong thing

Within 48 hours he'd rewritten his CV, refreshed his LinkedIn headline, and fired off applications to 4 roles that looked roughly like the one he'd just lost.

He felt productive. He'd done something.

He also had no real idea what he wanted next. And in 2 days of frantic activity, he hadn't once stopped to ask...

When a senior career gets disrupted, the reflex is almost universal. Update the CV. Refresh the profile. Apply to the nearest version of the job you just had.

It feels like progress, because it's visible and it's fast.

And this is reaching senior people now, not just early-career.

Nearly half the layoffs tracked across 2023 were manager level and above (Live Data Technologies, reported by CNBC). Manager headcount fell 6.1% in the three years to May 2025.

So more senior professionals than ever are reaching for the same reflex. The CV first.

Something important has changed though. A polished CV used to be a differentiator.

It signaled effort, clarity, seniority. I even remember paying for a professional firm to help me polish it and adjust it to the role type I was aiming to get. Now anyone can generate a sharp, well-structured, keyword-perfect CV in about 90 seconds with a free AI tool. Recruiters know this. Hiring managers know this. The document that used to set you apart has gotten commoditised. Almost overnight.

Think of your transition as 2 layers.

There's the output layer: the CV, the LinkedIn profile, the application, the cover letter. The visible things.

And there's the input layer underneath it. What you actually want. Where your value is genuinely moving. What problem you're now uniquely good at solving. Which direction you’d want your next 5 years to take ideally, if there were no constraints whatsoever..

Almost everyone pours their energy into the output layer, because it's concrete and it feels like motion. The input layer is harder, slower, and there's no template for it. So it gets skipped.

But the output is only ever as good as the input behind it.

A perfectly formatted CV that points in no clear direction is just a tidy document with nothing to say. And now that AI produces the formatting for free, the only thing left that carries any value is the clarity you bring to it. The direction.

The thing AI can't generate for you, because it doesn't know what you want.

I've caught myself doing the exact same thing, in a completely different context.

I'm building a company solo right now. And there's a constant pull to polish the visible surface. The pitch deck, the landing page, the demo. It feels like work. It looks like progress. You can lose a whole day to it and feel great about yourself.

But I've learned, more than once, that when the deck isn't working the deck is rarely the problem. The problem is the thesis underneath it. What am I building, for whom, and why now. Get that wrong and a beautiful deck still points nowhere. Get it right and an unpolished one wins the room.

The deck is the output. The thesis is the input.

Your CV is your deck.

Polishing it before you've done the foundational thinking is the same trap. And it's a comfortable trap, because the thinking is genuinely hard.

There's no template for working out what you actually want now, or what your experience is really worth in a market changing this fast.

Here's why I'm telling you this in a career newsletter:

That input-layer work, the strategy before the search, has historically meant hiring an executive career coach. Interestingly most senior professionals never do it. The value may be attractive to them but it’s been either perceived or believed to be a luxury, so they default to the free, fast, visible reflex instead. The CV.

That gap is what I'm building Zelova to close. A career strategy service that does the input-layer work with you, properly, before you start anywhere near the output. The product will be finalised over the next few months but you can sign up to get early access here to follow along.

If your role disappeared tomorrow, where would your energy go first?

If the honest answer is "straight to the CV", you're not wrong to get there eventually. But do the layer underneath first. Spend a week on the input before you spend an hour on the output. Work out the direction, then let the document serve it.

One tool I’ve created and used to do this - and the one that got downloaded the most - is called the Career Audit. You can find it here and download it too.

Get that order right and everything downstream gets easier. The CV writes itself. The applications get sharper. The conversations get better. Because they’ll all be pointing somewhere you actually reflected on enough and chose.

David